


moving like angels washing themselves

by starlatine



Category: BioShock Infinite
Genre: Accidental Incest, Airships, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Facial Shaving, Hand Feeding, Non-Sexual Bondage, Parent/Child Incest, Trick or Treat: Chocolate Box
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-19 05:28:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12404166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlatine/pseuds/starlatine
Summary: She lingered, fingering the broach on her neck absently. He hadn’t paid much attention to it before, but the engraved bird was diving low as if struck. “I trusted you. I’ve never trusted anyone before.”"I'm sorry."“I don’t know if I believe you,” she said, shaking her head and looking at him with something like pity.





	moving like angels washing themselves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [originally](https://archiveofourown.org/users/originally/gifts).



> "Accidental Incest" tag due to the fact this fic diverges from canon prior to Elizabeth's parentage reveal.

We moved like angels washing themselves.  
We moved like two birds on fire.  
ANNE SEXTON, from "How We Danced"

 

 

Booker came to in total darkness, mechanical churning echoing through his ears.

“We’re somewhere over the Atlantic. Past the tip of Newfoundland, I believe.” The voice was familiar, and as he blinked himself back to full consciousness, the relevant memories came over him the way a hangover does when you first sit up. The rocket, the city, the tower, the girl. After a whole lot more trouble than he’d bargained for, they’d made it to the _First Lady_. He’d set course for New York; he was going to bring them the girl and wipe away the debt, closing this job even if he’d be trading one type of damnation for another. He still hadn’t been prepared for the cast of her expression when she realized what he'd done, let alone her tears, but he was even less prepared for the hard knock on the head that followed.

He was awake now, but the lights were still out, and he was bound to what felt like a chair. His wrists were tied together behind the back, and a cursory flex revealed the knots to be serviceable, done with something that felt like ship's rope. Yet another of Elizabeth’s surprising talents. 

A headache threatened at his temples, and he was starting to think he’d imagined the sound of her voice when he heard fabric shift and heels click towards him on the wooden floor. Armed with only four senses, he felt the heat from her body as she came closer more acutely than he'd be able to normally. (Though if Booker were beginning to realize one thing, it was that his usual limits meant nothing where the girl was involved.)

His throat was so sore he had to clear his throat before speaking, and his own voice was unfamiliar in his ear. “Where are we headed?”

“Paris,” she said, quite close to his ear.

Delicate, swift fingers reached behind his head to untie a knot, and a piece of cloth he thought was his tie fell away from his face. The sudden rush of light stung his eyes, and he blinked until his pupils finished contracting. When his vision finally cleared, he was faced by Elizabeth, schoolgirlish as ever, staring him down with her arms crossed in front of her. Shedidn’t look at all like the kind of girl who could pull one over on him with a clumsy fake tears routine. Except he now knew she _was_ that kind of a girl. Even so, he didn’t think she was faking as she scanned him over as if looking for bruises, concern fighting out with contempt on her face. 

“Why didn’t you leave me behind?” He rasps.

“There was no time. Vox gunships came out of nowhere and I had to get out of there.” 

“Elizabeth,” he begun, but no words came. He couldn’t apologize. There was no possible world in which he wouldn’t make the same decision; it was his nature. He only knew he felt relief down to his bones at being prevented from finishing the job.

Her face went stony. “Get comfortable, Booker. It’s three days to the other side.” She sighed, and added in an undertone, “I can’t get this thing to Paris on my own. I don’t have anyone else,” so quietly he couldn’t be sure he hadn’t imagined it. 

She turned around and walked through a door that lead out of whatever empty room she’d tied him up in. He was left alone with a rapidly surfacing headache, a sense of foreboding thick in his stomach, and a view of clouds idly passing by the window across from him.

 

 

An indeterminate amount of time passed before she came back to him. For a lack of anything else to do, he drifted in and out of sleep, his neck aching from lack of support. He dreamed in snippets: of his office, of smoke clouds rising over the city at night, of a baby in the arms of a thief and of the sea stretching out beneath them, waiting for one piece of the ship's intricate machinery to malfunction and send them crashing into the deep. In his moments of consciousness, he thought he heard her footsteps on other levels of the airship above and below him, but couldn’t be sure his brain wasn’t just twisting the sounds of the engines into shapes to torture him further. 

_It's a good thing she was able to protect herself,_ a voice in the back of his head whispered. _You've never quite managed to keep anyone safe._

Eventually she came back through the doorway she’d left through, a brown paper bag in one hand. “Leaving you to starve seemed unnecessarily cruel,” she said by way of explanation.

She made no movement towards untying his bonds; she sat on the floor next to him, opened the bag, and ripped a chunk off a loaf of bread with her fingers. She was such an odd thing in the way she moved and breathed, like she was acting out an idea of what regular girls were like without getting the gist of it. Too wholehearted in everything. Somehow both cynical and naive.

“Still don’t trust me not to turn this ship around?” His voice had evened out, but it was still rusty from sleep.

She looked down at the bread in her hands. “I’m not taking chances, this time.”

He nodded. “Smart.”

“I don’t like it. I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to apologize for,” he said, his voice thick. He opened his mouth like he was taking communion, and she placed the bread on his tongue with the gravity of a reverend. It was one of the strangest things he’d ever experienced. The side of her finger brushed the corner of his mouth, and she retracted it quickly.

It took about ten minutes for her to feed him the small loaf, and there were a few pieces of cheese and fruit after that, as well as some water she tipped into his mouth from a flask. His throat was parched, and the angle was such that a few rivulets ran out the side of his mouth to soak his collar.

Even when she’d given everything she brought, she lingered, fingering the broach on her neck absently. He hadn’t paid much attention to it before, but the engraved bird was diving low as if struck. “I trusted you. I’ve never trusted anyone before.”

“I’m sorry.” 

“I don’t know if I believe you,” she said, shaking her head, and looking at him with something like pity. 

 

 

She returned what couldn’t be more than six hours later. She’d found a toolbelt somewhere on the ship and fastened it around her waist with a miscellany of objects tucked into its pockets. The image was quaint, but her hair was starting to frizz out of its bow. In the half-light, before he’d shaken his head and regained his bearings once more, she looked like a witch and an angel trapped in the same body: something between a girl and a woman and more terrifying than either.

In Elizabeth’s arms was a small basin, filled about half full with water; she set it down next to his legs. She pulled a jar of cream and a straight-razor out of her belt. “It might be awkward, but it’s the only basin I could find.”

“Have you ever done this before?”

She scowled. “I’ve seen it done.”

“Reassuring.” Booker had a strong suspicion that the increasingly flimsy pretenses to care for his physical needs were excuses to spend time in his company. For all her bravado on the bridge, she was still the girl from the tower. Against his better judgement, he leaned back, offering up his neck.

She knelt by his side so their heads were the same height. After a moment, she reached out for his jawbone; she steered his head into a slightly different angle and applied the shaving cream. Booker fought his impulse to jerk away and use the element of surprise to knock her down even as he remained tied to the chair. He set his jaw and remained in place. 

Her hands were steady with the straight-razor, though her strokes went against the grain in somewhat unwieldy paths. Booker had never placed much importance on keeping up appearances, and he couldn’t remember the last time someone had done something like this for him. He hasn’t let another body this close to him outside of a fight in far too long, let alone one holding a blade to his skin. Once or twice, the steel of her thimble brushed against the fresh skin of his neck and jaw, the cool metal against his flesh as startling as an electric shock.

“We’re not going to New York,” he said. “There’s not enough juice left in the ship. You know as well as I do. Nothing in it for me to stop you from going to Paris now.”

“I want to believe you,” she said, as the blade ran across his upper lip.

“You can keep me tied up, if it makes you feel better.”

“No,” she sighed. “It wouldn’t.”

His voice was more hoarse, more desperate, than even he expected to hear. Booker sounded like he was pleading for something he didn’t understand. “I know I deserve it.”

“This isn’t about what you _deserve_.” Vulnerability shone through her guarded expression like the light slipping through the edges of a doorframe.

“I can leave you alone, if—”

“No.” She made the last swipe across his lower neck and rinsed the blade, but didn’t holster the razor back into her belt. Instead, she looked at it for a time, a muscle working in her jaw, before bringing it to the knot at his wrists. “You were my first friend,” she said, her voice caught as if the admission caused her pain. “My first everything. Just stay, Booker.” 

Her body was silhouetted by the sun setting through the ship’s wide windows, and before he got to his feet for the first time in a day, he brushed his knuckles against the back of her hand. 

 

 

They stayed there and watched the sun go down until the ship was sailing through the dark, hung between the stars and the abyss.

“I’ve been sleeping in the main suite,” she said, and walked up the stairs ahead of him. He paused, trying to figure out whether that was an invitation to follow her or an instruction not to do so, but she kept walking up the ornate curved staircase and, eventually, he followed.

She sat on the bed, unlacing her boots unhurriedly, and turned onto the magnificent four-poster without acknowledging his presence. The promise of a horizontal place to sleep proved overwhelming, and he followed her a moment later. He took the other side of the bed, leaving a solid half-foot between them. The sheets of Lady Comstock’s Grand Suite were spotless and white; Booker was sure dirt was rubbing off his clothes into the linen. Right before he fell under, he felt her cast her hand back to grasp at his wrist. Her touch was like a brand on his skin, another to add to his collection. A mark of Cain to be noticed by people passing him in the street.

Sleep drifted over him and then back out. Each time he surfaced to consciousness throughout the night they seemed to have ended up closer together, somehow, the line of her body nestled against his own as if they were man and wife and they spent each night of their normal lives together in this way. The thought made him turn over and force himself back into sleep once more.

Light came through the lace curtains early, and he realized upon waking for the final time that he’d drawn his arm around her waist in the night. He couldn’t remove it without waking her, and so he remained frozen in place. After an indefinite amount of time passed further, she turned back to him, and her eyes were like the sea at night: eternal. More limitless than God. She reached out with her thimbled hand and pushed his eyelids closed with her thumb and ring finger, shuttering him in the dark. 

He grasped her shoulder with his left hand, the touch standing in for apology. He could feel her collarbones through the linen of her shift. His weatherbeaten hands were startling against the smoothness of her skin.

He felt outside of space and time. A handful of days had passed since he left his office, and now he was flying through the sky as the ostensible prisoner of the girl he’d tried to drag to New York against her will. None of it felt real, except her; he realized also that nothing had felt real in a long time. He had an urge to hold onto her, to try and get his bearings. He still hadn't opened his eyes since she'd closed them, but he could feel her breath ghosting over his mouth. Neither Booker’s present or preemptive guilt were enough to dissuade him from tipping the scales, sending the coin flipping through the air without care for how it’d land; nor was the voice in the back of his head saying, _she deserves better than this and you deserve worse._

For the most part, they kissed.

She was clumsy but not cautious. They held each other, hands scrabbling over each other’s backs like the embrace of ones drowning. Her nails clutched his neck too tightly, drawing valleys of sharp sensation across his skin. It was the first time he’d been with another person in five years. There’d been less than five across the last fifteen, most of the encounters half-remembered drunken rendezvous with women he remembered in the morning only by their dark hair and somber expressions. She brushed her lips over his jaw, across the skin freshly shaved a few hours earlier, and desire pushed through him like a bull in a pen. He moved down to the foot of the bed and she pushed herself up on her elbows, “What—” 

He knelt next to her legs and rested his head against her outer thigh, their skin separated by the layers of skirt and petticoat. After a moment, her hand came down to brush the top of his head. Anointing him with her touch. His mind whirled. He’d always been of most use with a task at hand, letting his instincts take over from reason: this was the same. His hand, branded like cowhide, ran up the pale expanse of her thighs under her skirts. Her breath was already coming heavily, even before he crossed the Rubicon between them, rubbing between her legs until she curled against him, her hands pulling roughly at his hair. He shut his eyes, only attuned to the sounds of her, shocked and needy and afraid of the strength of her own want. It wasn’t long before she seized up and panted for him to stop; she pulled him up closer to her and kissed him again messy and imprecise, pulled her arms around him, and he came from the friction of her body without taking off his trousers.

It was a long time before they let go of each other, and for the first time since they’d met, Booker found Elizabeth to be at a loss for words.

 

 

As was becoming his pattern, Booker woke up alone. There was no evidence Elizabeth had even been in the room with him. The blankets were tangled around his limbs like he'd been thrashing in his sleep. It was only when he moved and felt the state of his trousers that he could be sure the events of the early morning had even happened; the memory was dreamlike, like something from childhood or another life.

He found her in the bridge. The sun was fully flushed, illuminating the sea in reflections visible even from their altitude. One fist was planted against her hip and the other traced over the multitude of dials and levers adorning the ship's controlboard.

She didn't turn around, just remarked, "The navigation systems do most of the work, lucky for us." She looked over her right shoulder, girlish brows drawn stern as a judge's. "Have you ever seen Paris, Booker?"

"Never left the continent." He was an American through-and-through, whatever else. Used to be proud of that, too.

"We're only a few hours from the French coast, if I understand all this—" she gestured at the dials— "correctly. Time for both of us to have our horizons expanded."

He struck a match, lighting one of the cigarettes he'd managed to keep in his breast pocket in defiance of all odds, and sat in one of the spinning chairs that must have been intended for the navigator. The smoke rose in a haze around them and lingered in the room, windows unopenable as they were. She watched him fully, then, without affected disinterest. It was only then he realized she'd left her hair undone, ribbon abandoned. She looked like a creature from myth, and he felt something inside of him twist both with the memory of the weight and softness of her body asleep against his on the opulent sheets and with a thousand nameless regrets, not least that his debt would now likely never be wiped clean. His life was a dead end; in a way he'd always known this. Regardless, the blue of her eyes burned it into him as nothing else ever had.

"May I try that?" It took him a long moment to realize she meant the cigarette. He handed it to her with the same hand he'd used to spark men alive with Shock Jockey. There'd been an itch under his skin ever since. Their fingers brushed for longer than necessary before she took ahold of it with what he knew by now to be artificial confidence. All the same, she managed not to cough much. Smoke curled out from her nostrils, and she flicked the ash onto the floorboards as she turned back to the horizon. "Can you make out land? I can't tell whether I'm imagining it."

He squinted into the light. At that distance, he couldn't tell the water from the sky. "Looks like it, yeah."


End file.
